


A Sudden Bi-alisation

by FireOpal (Sandel)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming Out, Community: HPFT, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-29 08:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11437365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandel/pseuds/FireOpal
Summary: After talking to Hermione, Harry realises something about himself.---Written for theJune Prefect Challenge: The Coming Out Challengeover at hpfanfictalk.com.





	A Sudden Bi-alisation

"Really, Harry? ‘Friend'?" said Hermione, in a sceptical tone that Harry couldn't quite read.

She still had her nose in a legal document regarding Squib inheritance rights that she'd been reading as he spoke. He'd popped into her office on his way home just to chat, and he hadn't been sure whether she'd really been paying attention, but apparently she'd been listening enough to take exception to something he'd said - he just wasn't sure what exactly.

"Yeah?" he asked, not even sure how to phrase a proper question.

"Come on; we're both adults, they're both dead, surely we can speak plainly by now?" Hermione shot back, as if they both knew exactly what they were talking about and he was just being deliberately obtuse.

Harry remained silent, and after a moment Hermione finally looked up from the parchments of policy proposals on her desk. When she did, she apparently saw something in his face that made her sigh deeply.

"Men!" she exclaimed, as she drew her hand through her hair, momentarily flattening it. "Sometimes I really can't believe how clueless you can be! This is on par with Ron back when he was at his worst. Harry: Professor Dumbledore was gay. He was in love with Grindelwald. I'm not sure if it was ever reciprocated, but there was more to that relationship than Grindelwald being ‘someone he once thought of as a friend,' _that's_ for sure!"

Harry just stared at her. Dumbledore was gay? Harry had heard the word ‘gay' before, of course, but he'd never paid it much attention. He'd always been busy with other stuff, and it'd never seemed like it could have anything to do with _him_ in any way. Dumbledore gay... it boggled his mind. He supposed he'd almost been thinking of homosexuality as some Muggle thing, ridiculous as that seemed now that he thought about it.

So, Dumbledore had been in love with Grindelwald? Hermione almost always knew her stuff, and Harry saw no reason to doubt her now. But still. Dumbledore, in love with Grindelwald?

_A fleeting memory of Grindelwald's young, triumphant face, surrounded by a Gloria of golden hair swam up in Harry's memory and, well... Harry really couldn't blame Dumbledore for falling for that face._

And wasn't _that_ an alarming thought?

"I need to go home," said Harry, rising abruptly, half ready to rush out the door of Hermione's tiny Ministry office.

Hermione startled, but then she looked up at him with that look that she got sometimes, the one let you know that she'd figured something out that you didn't know yet. Back at Hogwarts he'd been the recipient of it almost daily, but it had been a while since he'd seen it by now. He'd almost even missed it. This time it came with a shrewd little smirk that made him feel like she was somehow having fun at his expense, though, which he wasn't sure he appreciated.

"All right," she said, "see you tomorrow! Remember to bring that rapport on the amulet smuggling ring. Oh, and say hi to Ginny from me! It's been ages since we talked, we really should get a lunch scheduled someday. Let's see, I'm usually free on Wednesdays, but this week I'll be on that thing in Camden. Maybe Friday... no, I'm going to sit in at that lunch with the Venezuelan Minister for Magic and the delegation of Norwegian Goblins. That's sure to be delightful. Now, next Monday might work, except..."

The familiar experience of listening to one of Hermione's deluges of words calmed Harry, and as she went through all her weekday lunch appointments for the coming three weeks at astonishing speed, his impulse to just bolt subsided. He remained standing as she finally tapered off, settling on dinner invite for both Harry and Ginny on next week's Saturday. With that decided, she rounded her desk to hug him goodbye.

"You work too much, Herms," he said, his face full of bushy hair. "Don't forget to live too!"

"I know, I know, Ron's always telling me that..."

"He's not always wrong, you know."

Hermione smiled up at him, holding on to his arms even after they'd ended the hug.

"Take care," she said, squeezing his upper arms before finally letting go.

"You too."

And with that, Harry turned on his heels and - after quickly closing his eyes - gave himself over to the familiar sensation of being pressed at from every angle.

* * *

Harry materialised again in the broom shed at the Burrow, where he kept his brooms - one couldn't go joy flying in broad daylight of London, so there was no point of keeping them at his flat. (Ginny kept hers at the Harpies' training grounds.) He wanted to fly to clear his head, so he grabbed his trusty Firebolt. It was still his favourite broom for just going out flying, even though his Starsweeper XIX - a birthday gift from Ginny - was better when he wanted to go fast or play Quidditch.

Broom in hand, Harry went out the shed, hoping no one would spot him through a window. He didn't feel like talking to anyone right now, but he also didn't want Molly or Arthur to notice that he was avoiding their company. He kicked off from the ground, and immediately felt a weight lift from his shoulder, as if blown away by the wind. For a long while he just flew around over Devon, looking down on hills, rivers, moors, and fields, feeling the wind in his hair and the moisture from low-level clouds on his skin.

When he started to shiver Harry cast a quick heating charm on his robes, but he still decided it was time to turn back. And as if on cue, his confused thoughts came spilling back into his head as soon as he turned his broom around. He thought of how he'd gotten weak in the knees the first few times he saw Bill, with his long hair, good looks, and aura of impossible coolness. He'd never thought twice about it before, only half consciously written it off as some sort of second hand brotherly admiration or suchlike.

He remembered looking at young Sirius in photographs and memories, spellbound by that handsome, arrogant face, that easy smile, those arresting grey eyes, those fluid motions... _His_ Sirius, the adult he actually knew, his godfather, had never caught his attention like that, but Harry could never look at the young version without the word ‘handsome' hovering at the back of his mind.

Even that odd obsession he'd had with Draco Malfoy in their sixth year at Hogwarts came up in his reveries, and the way that the jealousy he'd felt when Cho dated Cedric had been a tangled mess of emotions where both the way _she'd_ looked at _him_ and the way _he'd_  looked at _her_ had been painful, in a way that Harry had - quite consciously, now that he remembered it - chosen not to investigate closer. But _everybody_ had thought Cedric was handsome - lots of people had called him ‘pretty-boy Diggory'! - that didn't mean that they'd been _attracted_ to him! Harry had even though that _Tom Riddle_ had been handsome in his youth, and he _definitely_ hadn't been attracted to _Voldemort!_

 _Well, but didn't looking at Riddle feel quite different from noticing Bill's good looks, or even Sirius'?_ a traitorous little voice in his head asked. _There are many men that look good, of course, but that thrill that you feel when you look at some of them, isn't that quite like the thrill you feel when you look at a woman you like?_

* * *

After putting back his Firebolt in the Weasley broom shed, Harry Apparated home, into the entry hall of the little Ministry flat that he shared with Ginny - the Ministry had insisted on giving the Man Who Lived Again somewhere to live for free. He announced his presence with a,

"Hello?"

"Hi, honey, how was your day?" Ginny replied from the kitchen.

Through the open door Harry could see her pouring cat food into a bowl for their fluffy, white half-kneazle, Pom-pom, who looked on intently from the floor. Neither the cat nor his Ginny spared him a look at first, but when he didn't come over to sniff her flowery hair and kiss her, Ginny turned to him, food bowl in hand. As soon as she laid eyes on him she could tell that something was up.

"Has something happened?" she asked.

And Harry didn't know what to say at first, but then, before he could stop himself, he blurted out,

"Ginny, I... I think I might be gay."

Ginny's face underwent a series of odd grimaces, making her look almost like someone going through a Polyjuice transformation. Surprise, disbelief, anger, despondency, and confusion played over her features, as Pom-pom meowed indignantly from the floor, still staring at the bowl in her hand.

Seemingly lost for words, Ginny, her face now completely blank, set down the bowl right beneath her feet, far from its designated place beneath the tea towels and walked into the living room. She moved as if in a trance. Harry followed behind, taken aback and a little worried by the effect his words had had on the woman he loved. In the living room Ginny sat down in her huge red armchair, while Harry remained standing in the middle of the room, feeling lost.

"Are you... are you breaking up with me?" Ginny asked at last, her voice monotone and yet somehow sounding like it was on the verge of breaking.

"What? No! I love you!"

Harry fell to his knees by Ginny's chair and took her hands in his, squeezing them, trying to convey how much she meant to him with the touch.

Ginny's face went through one last transformation, briefly moving through relief to settle on confusion.

"Aw, I love you too," she said, smiling down on him, "but what _are_ you saying then? You think you like men but you still want to stay together?"

"Yeah... I mean, no... ... I talked to Hermione and she said Dumbledore was gay and I thought about Grindelwald and realised that I thought he was pretty, well, pretty, and then I went flying and realised that maybe I've always liked men without realising it? I mean, I like women too, obviously, I just... I don't know. I don't know."

"Riiight... so I didn't follow half of that, but I think there's another word instead of gay for it when you like both," Ginny said. "‘Bisexual' or something, I think."

"Oh, right. Yeah, I think I've heard that," Harry replied, feeling woefully uninformed.

How would he ever make sense of anything when he didn't even know the right words to talk about this stuff. He'd have to do _research_. This should have happened to Hermione. He didn't have the time to deal with this. He had a smuggling ring to bust.

The two of them sat in silence, as thoughts buzzed around Harry's skull, each more confusing than one that came before it. After a while Pom-pom, having finished his meal, sauntered into the room and jumped up into Ginny's lap. She let go of Harry's hands to pet him and Harry let his hands fall into his lap, where he just stared at them as he kept wondering what this new realisation would mean for him.

"So, er... I know I don't want to break up with you, but, uh... What _does_ this mean for us?" asked Harry at last, looking up at his girlfriend.

"Does it have to mean anything?" Ginny asked back, scratching Pom-pom behind the ears.

She seemed impossibly calm about the whole thing, now that her initial shock had subdued. It made Harry want to scream. He got back up on his feet and paced back and forth for a moment, before turning back towards the armchair with its little tableau of peaceful domesticity; Ginny had curled up in the chair now, looking half a cat herself, and Pom-pom was rubbing his head against her chin. Above his white little head Ginny looked at Harry with unreadable eyes.

"I don't know!" Harry yelled, throwing his arms in the air. "I didn't even know this about myself until today! It might take ages before I know what this means - for me, for us!"

That little outburst took all the air out of him again, and Harry found himself staring down at their living room carpet. The only sound in the room was Pom-pom's contented purring - the cat apparently couldn't care less about his master's weird antics.

Then Ginny got up, earning her a hissed protest from Pom-pom before he settled down in the hot spot she left behind in the chair. She went over to where Harry was standing and put her hand on his cheek. Harry shut his eyes for a moment, breathing in her flowery scent. When he opened them again she was looking up at him with her lovely brown eyes, warm like chocolate after meeting a Dementor. Looking into them still was a whole magic in itself, calming him down like nothing else on earth.

"Then let it take ages," she said. "We have time, and when things come up we'll figure them out. I'm pretty smart, you know."

She said that last thing with a wink, but Harry wasn't in the mood for joking around.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said, looking away from his girlfriend's face.

"Then you better do your very best not to."

Ginny sounded stern, but when Harry looked back into her face again there was a twinkle in her eye, and Harry smiled against his will. Maybe he _was_ in the mood for joking around after all.

"I will," he said. "I wouldn't want to get on the wrong end of one of your bat-bogey hexes anyway."

"Damn right you wouldn't!" Ginny shot back, before reaching up to kiss him.

Everything would be fine.


End file.
